


fifty percent

by helsinkibaby



Category: NCIS
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Future Fic, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-07-25 18:47:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16203494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helsinkibaby/pseuds/helsinkibaby
Summary: Nick’s been looking forward to lunch. So has Ellie.





	fifty percent

**Author's Note:**

> For fictober day 5 “take what you need”

Nick grins to himself as the microwave oven beeps, reaching inside and pulling out the delicious smelling bowl from within. He’s been looking forward to this lunch all day, something about chasing down a suspect and spending two hours in interrogation really giving him an appetite. Lost in anticipation, he turns and jumps when he sees Ellie standing behind him. 

“Whoa!” he says, just about managing to keep the bowl and its precious cargo upright. “I’m gonna put a bell on you, you know that?”

He expects a smart rejoinder from Ellie. Instead she merely smiles at him before glancing down at the bowl in his hands. “That smells amazing.” 

He blinks. “I know it does,” he says. “Your mom’s chilli, It was our dinner last night, remember?” And leftovers, he knows, are always tastier the next day. “You’ve got some for lunch too.” 

Ellie wrinkles her nose and manages to look embarrassed. “I ate mine earlier,” she admits. “I was just so hungry...” She tilts her head then, her look turning from neutral to vaguely winsome as she runs both hands down over her frankly enormous stomach. “Except now I’m starving again and I have no food.” 

Ah. 

So there it is. 

The thing is, Nick knows when he’s being played. Especially when it comes to Ellie, who he could read like a book even before they got married, even before they became an item. She’s tilting her head and batting her eyelashes and emphasising her stomach as if he could miss it and she’s doing all that just so she can con him out of his much anticipated, much looked forward to, lunch. 

He knows he’s being played but he still looks at her hands running over her stomach and just like he does every time, he grins like an idiot at the sight of their child inside her. Oh, he rolled his eyes at McGee back in the day, but he knows he’s every bit as bad now, if not worse. McGee, being a good and understanding friend, is not saying “I told you so.” Much. 

“Here,” he says, holding out his bowl to her. “Take what you need.” 

Her face lights up. “My hero,” she says and he doesn’t even try to fight the urge to roll his eyes. 

“Well, I’m fifty percent responsible for this situation,” he tells her, like she hasn’t reminded him of that fact a million times. It used to be when he was holding back her hair when morning sickness was bad, now it usually comes when she’s hungry or has a craving or she’s sending him to the nearest pharmacy for yet another box of antacid because heartburn is driving her crazy. “The least I can do is keep you fed.” 

Ellie quirks an eyebrow when she hears the words “fifty percent” and a frown appears on her face. “You know you’re not getting fifty percent of this back, right?” 

She both sounds and looks completely serious and he actually laughs. “Oh, baby, trust me, I know that.” He’s breaking her rule about terms of endearment on company time but he thinks she’ll forgive him. He breaks another rule by resting his hand on her stomach and, right on cue, the baby responds with a resounding kick, one that makes Ellie wince. “What’s mine is yours, remember? Or something like that.”

One of Ellie’s hand detaches from the bowl, covers his hand on her stomach. “I love you,” she tells him and he breaks a third rule in under a minute but it doesn’t really count because she said it first. 

“I love you too.”


End file.
